Politics & Power Quote by Barney Frank

Frank’s line is a small knife aimed at a big target: the political habit of laundering reality through euphemism. “It seems to me” is the tell - a practiced softener that disguises a hard accusation. He’s not merely requesting plain language; he’s implying that politicians have built a private dialect designed to keep accountability at arm’s length. When they stop using “the same words as other people,” they’re not being sophisticated. They’re creating plausible deniability.

The subtext is classically Frank: a blend of technocratic impatience and moral impatience. His career sat at the intersection of real policy complexity and public mistrust - especially in an era when Washington sold wars as “operations,” recessions as “downturns,” and corporate rescues as “liquidity facilities.” “Other people” is doing a lot of work here: it’s not just voters, it’s the reality principle. Frank frames clarity as a democratic obligation, not a stylistic preference. If citizens can’t name what’s happening, they can’t consent to it, resist it, or punish it.

The line also smuggles in a warning about how power operates. Specialized language isn’t neutral; it’s a tool for controlling the frame. Once you rename torture as “enhanced interrogation” or bribery as “access,” you don’t just obscure facts - you pre-negotiate the moral verdict. Frank’s demand is deceptively modest: stop hiding behind vocabulary. Speak like you live in the same country.